Mumbai, In a significant development aimed at executing key projects, Maharashtra Energy Minister Nitin Raut on Friday ordered the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Co Ltd (MSEDCL) to delegate powers to all its regional offices.

Accordingly, the MSEDCL's four regional offices in Nagpur, Aurangabad, Pune and Kalyan shall be vested with all powers pertaining to quantity freezing and time limit extensions under all projects, with the Joint Managing Directors and Regional Directors monitoring them for timely completion, said Raut.

The move comes almost five years after the four regional offices were carved out from the MSEDCL in 2016 for the very purposes of on-time execution of all projects and providing high quality services to the electricity consumers.

"However it turned out to be a futile exercise as the MSEDCL did not delegate any powers to the JMDs and RDs. Now, we expect that by delegation of power to the regional offices, all pending projects would be completed in time and it would also help improve the quality of the services we provide to all the consumers in the state," Raut said.

The minister's directions came during a presentation of the work progress of various ongoing projects in the Aurangabad region in the presence of Principal Secretary, Energy, Dinesh Waghmare and MSEDCL Aurangabad Region MD Sunil Chavan and other top department officials.

The JMDs and RDs have also been given authority to refund electricity duty to industrial consumers, among other powers.

Part of the original monolith Maharashtra State Electricity Board, the MSEDCL - or MahaDiscom as it is commonly known - is India's biggest power distribution utility and Asia's second largest power supplier meeting the needs of over 2.73 crore consumers including residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural and others.

It caters to the power requirements of the entire Maharashtra state over an area of 3.08 lakh sq. km covering over 450 cities and towns plus nearly 42,000 villages, barring some pockets of Mumbai which are served by the BEST, Tata Power and Adani Electricity.